Notes from Maine - 2023/07/09
I’ve watched or read a number of apocalyptic sci-fi stories recently. In Interstellar, Christopher Nolan paints a horrifically bleak (and probably entirely possible) picture of Earth’s doomed future. In that movie, people keep chasing ways to keep everyone fed while coping with (instead of solving) issues with the environment.
Some very smart people endorsed the idea humans will need to leave Earth in order to survive long term. Stephen Hawking said that nuclear war, climate change, or asteroid collision will wipe us out if we don’t find a way to branch out from this planet. Other people firmly believe that fixing issues on this planet would be far simpler and actually achievable.
There are two big problems with trying to make sure Earth stays habitable—shortsightedness and greed. It’s just unreasonable to expect a person’s imagination to extend more than, say, a hundred years or so. In your wildest dreams, how long do you think you might live? A hundred years, right? So it doesn’t make sense for one’s imagination to extend beyond that. I mean, maybe you’re thinking about your kids and their kids, and worried about leaving them a nice place to live, but by the time they’re adults that’s their responsibility, right? If we wanted to “fix” everything that’s wrong with Earth now, at least according to Stephen Hawking, we would have to eliminate the threat of nuclear war, make sure the environment wasn’t headed towards calamity, and create some kind of defense system against asteroid impact. Which one of those projects wouldn’t be completely dismantled by some politician or businessperson who saw a way to make a profit (or gain power) by subverting the effort?
I’m also re-reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir right now. It’s a decent book—probably not worthy of re-reading, but it’s decent. I liked The Martian but his other book (Artemis) was a train wreck. When I read that, I wanted to go back to Project Hail Mary to see if it was still decent after having seen all the flaws of Artemis. Did I really like Hail Mary, or did it just fall into my lap at the right time? Halfway through, I can say that I do like it. It has a serviceable plot device to let you watch an engineer solve engineering problems, which can be entertaining.
In that book, Weir invents an omnipotent manager who runs the Earth-saving project. It’s easy to accept that it would take a focused dictator with absolute power in order to save the planet in that scenario. A group of people would never be able to agree on the problems we’re facing, let alone the solution.
I recently read an article about the decrease in the insect population. That’s something that I noticed personally, so I was interested in the topic. When I moved into this house twenty years ago, you could barely go outside in June. There were so many mosquitoes and biting flies that you would be drained of blood in minutes if you even walked to the mailbox. Now, I see mosquitoes occasionally, but they’re not really a problem. Still tons of ticks around, but the flying insects are manageable. Of course there was a bigger pond out back when I moved it. A culvert washed out years ago and the pond became more of a creek. That probably accounts for a lot of the difference.
But, just for fun, I looked for references on the global insect population and found a summary of different studies on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations
The decrease in some areas is astounding. Flying insect biomass in Germany decreased 75% over the last 26 years. On the other hand, the Entomological Society of America says that predictions might, “have been extended well past the limits of the data or have been otherwise over-hyped.” It’s impossible to lament the loss of mosquitoes, but I do miss the fireflies. The pasture would be alive with a hundred twinkling lights on a summer evening. If I see half a dozen now I’m surprised.
What do we need to do? Maintain habitat for insects? Decrease use of pesticides? Reduce artificial lighting? I don’t have confidence that any of those potential remedies will be adopted. First, people would have to agree that there’s a problem, and that’s never going to happen. Even if everyone agreed that the insect population was declining, there would still be tons of people around to say that it’s not an actual problem.
I find this information alarming, but I really don’t know if it’s a “problem” or not. There are expansions and contractions in the diversity of species. This might be the first mass extinction caused by humans, but I’m sure that everything will find a new equilibrium over time. If that involves a massive decrease in the number of people (because of food/water availability, or disease, or whatever), then I guess that’s what equilibrium looks like. I don’t have kids, so my shortsightedness is even more shortsighted than most people.
I’m still trying to figure out if plastic or paper bags from the grocery store are better. I guess reusable bags are the best, but my friend talked about people getting sick from not washing their bags. They carry meat one day and vegetables the next and then they get sick from bacteria. I don’t remember why everyone switched to plastic in the first place—did they tell us it was because they wanted to cut down fewer trees? Or maybe we all just assumed plastic bags were better because they were cheaper? In my town, customers now have to pay a fee for every new bag they use. Down the road in Freeport, you can’t sell meat or produce in styrofoam packaging. They’ve had that rule for years.
My father used to call it “stereofoam” for some reason. He would also call aluminum foil “tinsel paper.” The tinsel we used on our Christmas tree was made of delicate lead strands that we manipulated with our tiny, bare hands. Wikipedia says, “use of lead tinsel was phased out after the 1960s due to concern that it exposed children to a risk of lead poisoning.” My response to that is five simple words, “Not in our house.” They say that lead exposure as a child leads to non sequiturs, and counting errors, and to that I say:
Take care. Hope you’re well, and all my best.
